Jason Clayworth reports:
Iowa took steps Thursday to officially reject what some have called a national identification system being criticized by some lawmakers as unconstitutional.
The federal REAL ID Act was passed in 2005 and signed by former President George W. Bush in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The act calls for the digitized synchronization of information from state transportation databases. The new licenses would feature a standardized bar code that could be scanned for immediate retrieval of a person’s identification.
Lawmakers in 25 other states – including Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota – already have passed resolutions or laws that denounce or refuse to implement the act, according to the Tenth Amendment Center, a California group.
Read more in the Des Moines Register. Want to know what’s going on with Real ID in Florida? Read Jim Harper’s Cato@Liberty commentary, “Is the REAL ID Rebellion Coming to Florida?”
Meanwhile, Amar Toor reports that in Washington:
House Republicans are pushing the Obama administration to move forward with a controversial law that, if enacted, would require every state to issue nationally standardized identification cards to its citizens.
As it stands right now, states have until May 11th to comply with the 2005 Real ID Act, signed by President Bush.[…]
In a letter sent to Napolitano last week, Rep. James Sensenbrenner and two Republican colleagues warned the Secretary that “until Real ID is fully implemented, terrorists will continue to exploit this vulnerability to accomplish heinous purposes.”
Read more on Switched.
Real ID was a bad idea from the git-go. It’s taken some states – and citizens – a long time to recognize the threat to our privacy and civil liberties that this type of national ID in disguise system poses, but let’s not make a bad law worse by actually investing more money in it.
Tell your legislators that you don’t want Real ID, you don’t need it, and you don’t want your taxpayer dollars spent on yet another scheme that provides a false sense of security while eroding privacy.